R.E.M pictured in 1992 at the time Automatic for the People was released

But wind forward quarter of a century and I’m in the company of a different, unguarded if slightly jet-lagged Stipe to talk about the band’s most celebrated album . . . and his younger self.

REM began work on Automatic For The People soon after all four members passed 30. It reflects loss of carefree youth but is filled with emotional intensity.

Appearing a year after Nirvana’s Nevermind (and the grunge movement’s most significant anthem, Smells Like Teen Spirit), REM’s understated opus seemed at odds with the times, yet all the more compelling for it.

“It sounds like the work of people who have just come through their twenties,” Stipe, now 57, decides. “Past the famous age in rock ’n’ roll when people of 27 or 28 drop dead.

“That song grew wings,” he says. “It’s a very simple thing but simple is sometimes hardest to attain.

“We managed to write a song that struck a chord with people and has that unique position of being exactly the right song for the moment.

“Everyone has that moment but if you don’t need it, you can skip over it to the next track. We all know it’s always there.” The idea that a song can have a profound effect on someone’s life is not lost on Stipe.

“Well, Gershwin, Maria Callas and Edith Piaf have all affected me with pieces of music,” he confesses. “And so did Patti Smith and I met one of those people (his great pal Smith).

“I’ll use another example that resonates with me, Elton and George Michael’s version of Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me.

I can’t bear listening to early version of Man on the Moon

Michael Stipe

“How could you possibly improve on that song? You bring in George Michael. They are two men whose voices are very similar and one of them learned how to sing listening to the other. Now they’re doing the song together and somehow it becomes even more majestic.”

Next we turn to another of Automatic For The People’s pivotal songs. . . Man On The Moon, which explores conspiracy theories with wit and a fair degree of ­poignancy.

Were the moon landings real? Did comedian Andy Kaufman fake his death? Was Elvis still alive?

“You know. . . it was shot on a sound stage in Nevada and all the astronauts were drugged to feel as if they were gravity-free.”

Mills interrupts Stipe’s train of thought: “There’s one more in there. . .”

“Elvis!” exclaims the singer. “Did Elvis die or did he just decide to step away? It’s all absurd stuff, isn’t it?”

To this day, Stipe remains bemused by his spontaneous lyrical outburst. “Why did I write that song? I didn’t intend to. I just put myself in the position where it could come and it surprised me as much as anyone.

“I’m still shocked at Mott The Hoople in the opening line. That’s what I was listening to around the time Kaufman was on TV.

I had to live with the fear of HIV for almost 10 years

Michael Stipe

“As a 14 or 15-year-old, All The Young Dudes resonated with me because of my sexuality. There was a hot guy in glasses and I wore glasses.”

This brings us onto the sublime Mills/Stipe creation, the piano-led Nightswimming, notable for the absence of Buck and Berry but featuring an oboe part written by John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin. Jones, brought in by producer Scott Litt, also masterminded strings on four other tracks.

Mills says: “Nightswimming had my piano and strings. It became a beautiful elegy of teenager-ness, of escapism, of memory.”

And Stipe chips in: “It’s about being in your early thirties and looking back at people in their early twenties.

“They don’t understand, the solemnity, the holiness of this act (swimming at night). They’re too loud, too rambunctious. . . and they’re gonna get us all busted!”

This, he explains, is why the lines “I’m not sure all these people understand/It’s not like years ago” are included in the song.

Mills again: “To be able to go out with a group of friends, late at night, in the dark, illegally, to build a bonfire, take off your clothes, get in the lake, splash around . . . that’s everyone’s dream.

“The song was based on a series of nights one summer. A friend of ours owned a lake, and had the police known, they would probably have arrested us. Those were times when you could get away with that sort of thing.”

Finally, I ask Stipe if Automatic For The People is REM’s finest achievement. “That’s hard to answer because if that was the peak of our career, what were we doing the rest of the time?

“We had peaks and valleys like everyone and we would often compare ourselves to Neil Young.

“He’s an artist everyone in the band deeply admired but whose albums had gone from the very brilliant to ‘nice try.’

“What I’m thrilled with is that we never blamed anyone else for the missteps, the times we fell on our faces. Do we have regrets? Not so many.

One song that resonates down the years is Everybody Hurts, often covered but never better than REM’s original with Stipe’s aching vocals

“There are a few music videos I would have done differently, a few edits I would have made on some songs or records.

“But looking at the whole of our time together, there were several peaks and Automatic was certainly one.” Though he’s excited about his production work on electro outfit Fischerspooner’s next album and singing four songs (including two by Ringo Starr and Sunday Morning by the Velvet Underground, at a recent New York charity event), Stipe generously maintains: “I’m not great without these REM guys as a performer.”

As he rises to leave the room, he unexpectedly turns the tables on me, a moment I can’t resist sharing because it says much about the way he’s changed.

“I’d forgotten you have the most mellifluous voice,” he says, fixing me with those vivid blue eyes. “It just moves like the waves. It’s really beautiful.” Cue my red face and Stipe adding: “I didn’t mean to make you blush.”

I bet he wouldn’t have spoken to me like that in 1992.

R.E.M AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE

1. Drive

2. Try Not To Breathe

3. The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite

4. Everybody Hurts

5. New Orleans Instrumental No1

6. Sweetness Follows

7. Monty Got A Raw Deal

8. Ignoreland

9. Star Me Kitten

10. Man On The Moon

11. Nightswimming

12. Find The River

The 25th anniversary ­edition contains REM’s only 1992 live show and the deluxe version adds a disc of demos.